By the May 12 deadline, the Northwest Power Planning Council had
received 55 submissions recommending amendments to the Council’s
regional fish and wildlife management program, last revised in 1994.
A $16 million Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery plan won Northwest Power
Planning Council approval Wednesday despite an early solicitation that
produced construction bids ranging from $4 million to $11 million over
the targeted cost.
The Spokane Tribe has been denied a request to refill Lake Roosevelt
behind Grand Coulee Dam two weeks earlier than projected.
Lawyers for fishing and conservation groups asked a federal judge on
Friday to order the Bureau of Reclamation to stop delivering irrigation
water to unauthorized farmland in the Northwest.
A Northwest congressman has won subcommittee approval for barring
federal agencies from implementing the $56 million Interior Columbia
Basin Ecosystem Management Plan until they evaluate the impact on small
businesses and provide for mitigation.
Caspian terns are favoring by more than an eight to one ratio East Sand
Island to Rice Island, which is exactly where a multi-agency Caspian
Tern Working Group had planned for them to nest before an ill-fated
hazing plan was halted in court.
A flood of comments — many of them raising “significant issues” — may
push a Corps of Engineers recommendation on lower Snake River dam
breaching into year 2001.
Northwest politicians, speaking from pulpits at home and in Washington,
D.C., said this week that their constituents deserve to hear Democratic
presidential hopeful Al Gore’s opinion on a divisive regional issue —
whether four Lower Snake River dams should be breached as part of the
effort to restore depleted salmon stocks.
River operators and fish managers this week wrestled with the
ingredients of a four-part dilemma: Aggressive flood control measures
that have left reservoirs low; cooler weather that has slowed snowmelt
and reduced river flows; a juvenile smolt migration that is reaching a
peak; and the need to refill reservoirs.
Nine months of legalistic jousting over how much Bonneville Power
Administration should charge its electricity customers, and whether
those rates are high enough to cover the agency’s fish and wildlife
mitigation responsibilities, ends Monday with the release of final
“record of decision” signed this week by BPA Administrator Judi
Johansen.
Oregon and Washington politicians are opposing a proposal to remove
Clean Water Act permitting exemptions for silviculture operations.
Nearly 600 adult Pacific lamprey were released into the upper Umatilla
River and its tributaries May 8 and 9 as part of an experimental
restoration effort by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian
Reservation.
The most bountiful adult return since 1972 has enabled the first
commercial treaty fishery on Columbia-Snake river spring chinook salmon
in more than two decades as well as a relatively rare sport fishing
season in Idaho.
Caspian terns in the Columbia River estuary will remain largely
unmolested this year as a plan to move North America’s largest colony
was stopped by a federal court this week.
A request from Columbia Basin salmon managers to “spread the risk” to
migrating juvenile salmon by increasing the amount of water voluntarily
spilled at the Lower Snake River’s Little Goose Dam was rejected
Wednesday by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
A planned summer National Marine Fisheries Service pilot study to
evaluate the survival of subyearling fall chinook transported from the
Snake River remains somewhat in limbo because of criticisms from other
agencies and tribes about the study’s design.
A Nez Perce tribal hatchery supplementation plan — 18 years and $13.7
million in the making — could get the green light May 17 when the
Northwest Power Planning Council considers a $16 million construction
spending proposal.
A meeting of Columbia Basin fish and wildlife recovery’s analytical
minds was called this week to sort through the varied methods,
assumptions and conclusions now being produced that are intended to
eventually inform the region’s decision makers.
A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study of what to do with four lower Snake
River dams does not adequately address the water quality impacts of the
study’s four alternatives, nor does it offer a strategy to comply with
water quality standards.
Federal agencies’ lack of progress in sorting out conflicting mandates,
and a meddlesome Clinton Administration, have brought into question the
agencies’ ability to make sound salmon recovery decisions, according to
Northwest members of the U.S. House of Representatives Resources
committee.
Wide ranging suggestions on the near-term direction of Columbia Basin
salmon recovery efforts were offered Thursday by witnesses called to
testify at a U.S. House of Representatives Resources Committee hearing
in Pasco. All but a few said dam breaching should be dropped from
consideration.
The smolt-to-adult return rate of Columbia Basin hatchery salmon and
steelhead have been declining during the 1990s, along with the adult
fish’s value to fishers, according to natural resource economist Hans
Radtke.
Harvest of salmon in the Columbia River is at the lowest allowed level
ever. Further changes to harvest rates would not add significantly to
salmon recovery.
Breaching four Lower Snake River dams is not the answer for reviving
Columbia Basin salmon populations, a trio of Northwest lawmakers said
Tuesday at a Senate hearing at Bonneville Dam.
While Caspian terns are arriving in the Columbia River estuary in larger
numbers to begin their annual nesting, humans continue to argue in court
whether the birds should be moved from one island to another.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
